50 DAIRYING 



tinue to go on, and usually the butter flavor is more or less affected 

 by their progress. In many cases the butter is injured by allowing 

 the cream to stand very long after a quick ripening, and this makes 

 the practice rather an unsafe one for inexperienced buttermakers. 

 The safer practice to follow until one becomes expert in detecting 

 the proper point to which cream should be ripened, is to hold the 

 cream at a lower temperature and allow the ripening process to 

 develop slowly. 



481. Slow Ripening. The ripening of cream from 20 to 40 

 hours is far more common than is a quicker ripening. The usual 

 practice where milk or cream is handled daily during the entire 

 year is to run the sweet cream from the separators directly into 

 the ripening-vat to which a starter may have been added at the 

 beginning of the separation. If the cream is all separated at about 

 eleven o'clock, it is then thoroughly stirred and its temperature 

 may be about 70 F., while the acidity is near .2 per cent. The 

 cream is held at this temperature until its acidity has reached about 

 0.4 per cent. This may be attained at about 4 p. m., depending on 

 the conditions already mentioned (par. 475). At this point the 

 cooling of the cream is begun and continued until its temperature 

 has reached 50-55 F. This temperature is maintained until the 

 next morning, when the cream churned is of moderate richness. 

 Cream should not be held many hours after it has reached 0.6 per 

 cent, acidity, as the butter loses its fresh, clean flavor by continu- 

 ing the ripening after this point. 



482. When milk is separated every other day, as is often the 

 case in winter and the colder seasons of the year, the cream is held 

 for two days before churning. Under such conditions the tem- 

 perature of the cream should not be allowed to go much above 

 56 F. It is kept near this temperature until the acidity has 

 reached about 0.4 per cent. This will require some time, as the 

 ripening process goes on slowly at 56 F. under normal conditions. 

 If the milk when separated is partially ripened the cream will ripen 

 quickly and so high a temperature as 56 F. may not be a safe one 

 at which to hold the cream, but with sweet cream /and a moderate 

 amount of starter there is not much danger of over-ripening the 

 cream by holding it from 6 to 12 hours at 56 F. Frequent acid 



